Ways to work with Ākina Impact Consulting
Acorn Neurodiversity CEO, Tami Harris and Ākina Senior Impact Consultant, Nick Douglas at Ākina Social Investment White Paper Celebration event, July 2024.
Our clients and partners create impact in such diverse ways - that it can be hard to explain what exactly Ākina does! To help demystify Ākina, we want to introduce you to our services and ways you can work with us.
Since 2008, Ākina has been building Aotearoa’s impact economy, to put social and environmental impact at the heart of doing business. Our purpose, our reason for being, is a regenerative, equitable and inclusive economy that looks after our ecosystems and serves the aspirations of all our people.
We believe every organisation, just as every person, has the power to leave behind a positive impact. Ākina is privileged to support, measure and uplift the impactful work making real change in our communities everyday.
3 ways to work with Ākina Impact Consulting in 2025
Impact Strategy
Ākina supports organisations to develop a strong impact strategy: through understanding the aspirations of their stakeholders, defining impact goals that set direction, and then mapping out a pathway for the organisation to achieve them.
“In working with Ākina we entered a robust process that enabled us as an organisation to capture our strategic intent, work streams, and priorities from our formation up to this point.
This was a sizeable amount of diverse information in width and depth, and the Ākina team eased us through some gritty thinking to genuinely form our theory of change and a narrative that we have consensus on and are confident that fully represents us, our members, and where we are headed into the future. It was a valuable and positive experience”
— Tash Mcgowan – Partnerships And Revenue Specialist (EHA)
Impact Measurement
We can support you to identify meaningful and practical metrics and indicators to measure your impact and tell a compelling, evidence based story of change to your stakeholders or potential funders and investors.
“Developing your social impact journey with The Ākina Foundation is a 'must' for agile and innovative nonprofits. In an effort to better communicate our impact on social inclusion and equity for neurodivergent young people, we engaged the Ākina Foundation.
Ākina identified that Acorn’s interventions lead to social impacts across health, education, wellbeing and economic measures. Additionally, they helped us develop a measurement and evaluation strategy that will demonstrate our impact to funders going forward.”
— Tami Harris, CEO Acorn Neurodiversity
Social Return on Investment (SROI)
SROI is about understanding the financial value of the outcomes you create, and evaluating them against the cost of delivering the service or programme. The output will be an impact report capturing the key insights, data points, and your social return on investment figure.
Ākina provided insights and evaluated the programme's impact on key stakeholders: tamariki and rangatahi, their whānau/families, and wider communities. This work is based on insights gained from engaging stakeholders (e.g, teachers and social workers), a literature review, school surveys, and a social cost-benefit analysis.
Ākina’s evaluation reveals every dollar invested generates $4.40 in societal benefits including; improved physical and mental wellbeing, better educational outcomes, and stronger community connections.
— Fonterra Kickstart Breakfast Impact Report Insights